


Frogface

by TheMikeWheelers (jasongracefully)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Frog Prince AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 15:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10539789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasongracefully/pseuds/TheMikeWheelers
Summary: El had returned home, but not everyone was there for her to return to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was honestly a complete meme prompt that I attempted to take seriously.

It was November of 1984, El was officially back to Hawkins, adopted by Hopper and starting to cope with the year she had been missing for. 

A lot had happened in the year she was gone. Some good things had happened-- The boys had made a new friend, Max, and Will was back home and healthy. However, not everything was perfect in the small Indiana town. 

Nearly a month before she returned home, Mike Wheeler had disappeared mysteriously from his house one night. Chief Hopper had spent weeks looking for him, but to no avail, there wasn't a single trace. It was as if he had just vanished into thin air. 

Of course, after what had happened to Will the year before, Hopper had his immediate suspicions on where Mike may have gone, but the gate was closed, the Demogorgon was dead, and as far as he was concerned, there was absolutely no chance he could be in the Upside Down. 

So that left the mystery of Mike's disappearance. When El had returned, of course she was ecstatic to see Dustin and Lucas once again, but couldn't help but notice that one freckled boy was missing from the bunch. They tried to push off telling her for as long as they could, not wanting to give her the bad news on her first day back, but they couldn't hide it forever. 

Lucas and Dustin sat El down and told her all about the vanishing of their friend, and El just took it all without a word. She couldn't understand exactly what she was feeling upon hearing the news, but it felt as if there was something inside her chest, banging on her heart desperate to get out. She wanted to lock herself away from the other boys, but didn't dare miss a single word of what they said about him. 

The initial shock was hard. El felt she should be grateful, she had finally returned home, she was getting a family, and she was seeing her friends once again. Well, some of her friends. 

But nonetheless, El didn't feel lucky. No one questioned her upset state. They all figured she was just coping with the Upside Down, and of course there were the remaining traumas from that as well, but she was too quiet to voice the biggest concern on her mind. 

After a few weeks, El had begun to accept it. Maybe accept isn't the right word, because she still hated to think about it, a part of her still refused to believe it was true. But still, the aching pain in her chest began to dull, and curiosity got the better of her. She started to ask everyone all about Mike. She talked to the boys, to Max, to his family, to anyone who could tell her all the things she wasn't able to learn from her single week with him. 

On the last day of November, El decided she needed to do something for the boy who had meant so much to her. He had been missing for two months now, and everyone was starting to lose hope that he would ever return. So Eleven put on her brand new winter jacket and headed out for the Hawkins woods, the same place where she met Mike. 

She found the spot in the trees that was so familiar, the same spot that she remembered so vividly, lights flashing into her eyes, while three boys surrounded her, questioning on what she was doing alone out there at night. 

Tears started to well up in her eyes at the memory. El had been doing that a lot lately, crying. Everyone noticed, but no one dared to say anything. They all understood that she had been through too much to be deprived the right to get upset about it. 

Her nose started to sniffle so she wiped the dripping tears from her cheeks. She didn't want to think about this spot anymore, she didn't want to think about the moment she met the boy who would change her life, then just disappear away from her. 

She continued walking through the woods until she came across another familiar spot. Old, worn down train tracks lined the ground, covered in dirt and leaves from years of kids stomping over them. She had been one of those kids, a year earlier. El remembered walking over this spot with Mike. They had stayed a bit farther back from Dustin and Lucas, instead deciding to talk on their own. 

El smiled at the memory, remembering Mike always staring at her from the corner of his eye, not realizing that she could tell. Of course she could tell, who wouldn't notice the way he refused to pull his eyes off of her? 

_Ribbit._

El was yanked away from her thoughts by a loud sound below her. She looked down to see a small frog sitting beside the track, staring up at her like he knew exactly who she was.

A goofy grin broke out on El's face upon seeing the creature. She bent down to lift it up, eyeing it closely. It had a slimy back and was covered in dirt, but El didn't care, she loved frogs. 

Well, she hadn't always loved frogs. That love was actually a fairly new thing. It started during one of her many conversations with Lucas about Mike, begging him to tell her anything. Lucas told her everything about what school was like for them. He mentioned that mouthbreather, Troy, who El remembered so vividly, and with so much anger. Apparently Troy had decided to give his own special “nicknames” to the boys, Mike's being Frogface. 

“Frog? What's that?” El had asked him, and Lucas walked over to his bookshelf, pulling out one of his old science textbooks. He flipped through pages until he landed on one and showed it to El. She saw the strange-looking animal, and couldn't understand how that was supposed to look like Mike. 

El figured Mike must have hated that name, Frogface. It was degrading and insulting, but El couldn't deny, as strange-looking as these animals were, they were cute. If Mike was a frogface, well she didn't care, he was _her_ frogface. 

She looked back down at the frog in front of her, it continued to ribbit like it was screaming for her attention. It's beady eyes were fixed onto El, and she couldn't shake that feeling that maybe it did recognize her. But that's impossible, isn't it? 

El traced her fingers on the frog’s back for a second, petting it lightly. She loved frogs now, because they were inherently connected to the boy she loved. She almost laughed imagining what Joyce would say right now if she saw her, she'd probably convince El to drop the frog down, that it was dirty or could carry sickness or something. 

But as El looked at the critter before her, she really didn't care. The sun was starting to set, and she figured she should return home before Hopper began to worry, or before it got dark out. El was still a bit unsettled by what these woods were like in the nighttime. 

About to put the frog down, El decided to give it a special goodbye before she left. Slowly she replicated what Mike had done to her a year earlier in the school, placing his lips onto hers. She wasn't exactly sure what he was trying to say, but he said that it was a way he liked her, so it must have been some kind of form of affection. 

She leaned in, quickly placing her lips on the frog’s backside, and pulling away just as fast. 

Then, with a rush of light taking over the entire woods, the frog began to change shape, morphing and twisting in every direction. Eleven wanted to scream, thinking somehow she must have hurt it, she must have misinterpreted what Mike had done and now she was going to kill this poor frog. 

But then frog started to grow, and it's shape changed to something more, well, familiar. Black hair popped out through the light, along with a dirty striped shirt. 

When the light had finally faded, El was awestruck at the sight in front of her. She didn't know whether to scream or run or refuse to believe her eyes, but in the place of where the frog had been just a minute before, now lied a boy. 

Her eyes widened when she saw his face, freckles that stood out far-too clearly. He looked back at her, obviously just as mesmerized. El couldn't move her glance away, she was transfixed on the familiar figure in front of her. 

Slowly, the boy got his bearings and stood up. Now he was facing her, and El figured she should say something, but she had no idea what to say. 

So she took in a deep breath, and called out to him, silently praying that it was how it seemed. 

“Mike?”


End file.
